Well written and acted, with nice sets and sound design. The special effects aren't great, but the chemistry between the actors is. The dialogue is engaging but does get a little too cutesy sometimes, hence the 7. Not scary, but dark, atmospheric, nicely crafted and well worth a watch IMO.
Plot summary
A YouTube-famous paranormal debunker attends an infamous medium's seance in an effort to expose his charlatan ways. During the evening she discovers this haunted house's occupants will do whatever it takes to avoid the limelight.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.WEB 1080p.WEBMovie Reviews
Essentially a 2-person play, but a very good one
Who threw that cup!
A sceptic attends a seance, and won't leave the house until she finds the truth.
Some nice ideas in this movie, treating the seance scenario as more than a gimmick in an attempt to dig down into character. The camera work is good, always trying out the interesting angle, and the location is used to the full to shape the story. This is mostly a two-hander, with decent performances as the characters lay out their conflicting beliefs through flashbacks to their pasts. Sometimes the music is interesting, with a mix of piano, strings and synth, although it does get laid on heavy in some talking scenes.
The big drawback is the dialogue, with way too much piled on when we can figure things out for ourselves, and way too much sarcasm even after the opening scene has pitched its sceptical credentials. That scene could have been really good if they just concentrated on the actors' faces as they reacted to events, instead of them butting in all the time, which would have made the piano episode really hit home with just a few words. The Tracey-Hepburn patter between the two main characters is kinda annoying, but they do settle into an interesting antagonism. But even then, the tone gets misjudged, especially in a scene that repeats the lame humour of the phrase "portable poltergeist panic-room," completely deflating the spooky events that preceded it.
The psychology turns out simple in the end, which is disappointing because it seemed to be building on the interesting idea of ghosts as people in wave, rather than particle, form, which could have mapped on to how we deal with each other emotionally. The resolution has the right idea, but goes on too long.
Overall: Plenty to chew on, but the writing watered it down.
Ps. What's with the roccata in the music credits?
OK indy if a little let down at the end.
Acting was fine although the main male character felt like he was emulating Ryan Reynolds occasionally. The female got on my nerves a bit.
There were a few plot holes but minor in nature and didn't affect the overall experience. The story is simple; a seance and one of the participants hangs around afterwards and proves to be a youtuber out to discredit the guy doing the seance. Its a bit talky but still kept me interested and I did notice some scenes were single shot and went on for a while so well done the actors for keeping me interested.
Where it fails is in the ghosts who looked like people dressed in white sheets with pale/silver face paint and black eyeliner which in fact is what they were. A few more dollars and some CGI would have fixed this, oh and some direction as they appeared to not know what they were doing. Don't expect any sudden scares, there are none. But there was a decent amount of tension.
The ending was over long and unsatisfying. I think it was about the woman coming to terms with her mothers death 10 years previous but I kind of lost interest as it felt drawn out to fill space.
A 5, it was headed in the right direction but lack of money was painfully obvious.